“The town [Crampton] was further maligned as a ‘drab abyss,’ the speaker of this phrase being a skeletal individual who always introduced himself as a ‘defrocked academic.’ This self-designation would usually provoke a query addressed to him as to its meaning, after which he would, in so many words, elaborate on how his failure to skew his thinking to the standards of, as he termed it, the ‘intellectual marketplace,’ along with his failure to conceal his unconventional studies and methodologies, had resulted in his longtime inability to secure a position within a reputable academic institution, or within any sort of institution or place of business whatever.”